There is increased recognition that patients suffer adverse events (AEs) or harm caused by treatments in dentistry, and little is known about how dental providers describe these events. Understanding how providers view AEs is essential to building a safer environment in dental practice.

Dental providers and domain experts were interviewed through focus groups and in-depth interviews and asked to identify the types of AEs that may occur in dental settings.

The first order listing of the interview and focus group findings yielded 1,514 items that included both causes and AEs. 632 causes were coded into one of the eight categories of the Eindhoven classification. 882 AEs were coded into 12 categories of a newly developed dental AE classification. Inter-rater reliability was moderate among coders. The list was reanalyzed and duplicate items were removed leaving a total of 747 unique AEs and 540 causes. The most frequently identified AE types were “Aspiration/ingestion” at 14% (n=142), “Wrong-site, wrong-procedure, wrong-patient errors” at 13%, “Hard tissue damage” at 13%, and “Soft tissue damage” at 12%.

Dental providers identified a large and diverse list of AEs. These events ranged from “death due to cardiac arrest” to “jaw fatigue from lengthy procedures”.

Identifying threats to patient safety is a key element of improving dental patient safety. An inventory of dental AEs underpins efforts to track, prevent, and mitigate these events.